Last week I went to the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts aka ICFA.

And to be perfectly honest aka “The freaks come out at night”

It’s a conference for science fiction and fantasy literature, fiction, and other sorts of media. My friends, Gabby, Megan, Adella, Vera, and I went, met a bunch of people, fangirled over Neil Gaiman, and presented papers. It was a heckova good time all around. We trashed our hotel room (Not on purpose. We were working on our theses and forgot to let housekeeping come in to clean. After three days it was quite horrific. I’m pretty sure my left over pad thai hissed at me when I tried to reheat it), acted like pretentious members of the academy, made fun of the people with no social skills, and drank wine in a hot tub.

You’re not supposed to bring wine into the pool area at the Sheraton.
But I was on vacay.
I put my wine into an old starbucks cup.
The hotel never found out.
Now everyone’s happy.

I would spend some time relating the events of the conference, but I figure that will bore all of you to death. Were I to go into tell you about what happened at ICFA I would end up only discussing all of the papers I heard. I’m not sure that would even fill up an entire blog post.

Some papers were good. Some papers were bad.
Some presentations made me think.
Some presentations made me think, ‘what barnyard animal raised you?’

Suffice it to say, the conference was awesome and I want to go back next year. However, I will not stay at the Sheraton. Any hotel that doesn’t allow wine in the pool area and charges $13.79 for breakfast is not the hotel for me.

Anyway, I’m writing this blog post mainly to relay the super-di-dooperly stupid thing Gabby, Meg, Adella, and I did after the conference.

When we were planning our trip to Orlando, we decided that we would stay over an extra day in order to go to Universal Studios. Gabby, Vera, and I had never been Harry Potter world. Considering I went to the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts you were probably able to divine that I’m a huge Harry Potter fan.

My non-lit major friends make fun of me.
And rightly so.
The day we planned to go to Universal dawned dark and dreary, but we were determined. Vera lives in California, so there was no way she was going to miss it. It looked like it was going to rain, but in Florida what looks like rain may not be rain. It may be one of four things:
1) a light drizzle
2) a hurricane
3) a “Gotcha! It’s not really gonna rain, you guys”
4) start building an ark

We go to Universal around 11:30. We drank butterbeer and rode the Harry Potter ride twice. (FYI, use the single rider line. You don’t get to ride with your friends, but you can forego the 75 minute wait and ride 2 times in 15 minutes. FYI DO NOT forego the 75 minute wait if you just drank two mugs of butterbeer. Found that out the hard way.) As we were walking through Hogsmeade it started to drizzle. I broke out my raincoat (booyah elements of nature!) and then we sought shelter in the Owlery. At this point we were stage 1- a light drizzle.

Unfortunately for us, Florida decided to forego stages 2-3 and skip right ahead to 4. In 14.7 seconds it went from “Oh man, it’s raining” to “CRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPP!!!!”
We waited in the Owlery for the rain to calm down.
And we waited in the Owlery for the rain to calm down.
Then we waited in the Owlery, but the rain didn’t calm down.
Vera made a run for it because she had to catch her flight.
The rest of us stayed in the Owlery thinking, ‘this’ll totally blow over in a few minutes.’

Eventually we remembered that we had paid $97 dollars for our tickets, and so we went for walk in the rain. There was no singing in the rain. There was just screaming in the rain. Adella was wearing white. Gabby was wearing khaki. Meg and I were wearing shorts. By the time we were done walking in the rain we had no secrets from each other.

I’m not sure how long we were walking in the rain. I do know that we walked from Harry Potter world to Jurassic Park to Cartoon World to “I want ice cream.” “It’s raining.” “I do not care.” to the Spider-Man ride. Thankfully we were able to ride the Spider-Man ride.
Everything else was closed due to inclement weather.
Except the water rides.
Do you see where this is going?
Eventually it did stop raining, but the rides we really wanted to go on weren’t going to open back up for the rest of the day. The guy we asked mentioned something about safety…blah, blah, blah. I’m not sure who said, “We’re already soaked. We might as well just go on the water rides” but none of us were smart enough to counter that person’s argument with, “Yeah, but we’ve got a 2 1/2 hour drive home and no clean underwear.”
So we high-tailed it back to Jurassic Park and went on the water ride.
And we got soaked.
Then we walked back to Cartoon World and went on the Dudley Do-Right ride.
And came out looking like drowned rats.
Side note: Meg wore a poncho on both rides. Useless.
Side note for the side note: I told her to buy the poncho. Useless.
It was after we got off of the Dudley Do-Right ride that we realized that we had a 2 1/2 hour drive home and no clean underwear. The more time I spend with myself the more I realize that my Bachelor’s degree and nearly completed Master’s degree have done NOTHING to aid my common sense.
Also, we had no place to change.
Because we had left our bags in the car.
We had left the car in the parking garage.
Do you know what it’s like to walk through Universal Studios in soggy underwear with your shoes leaving puddles everywhere? I do. So do Gabby, Meg, and Adella.
Do you know what it feels like to change clothes in the Universal Studios’ parking garage?
I do.
Feels like shame.
Do you know what it’s like to then have to walk into a Wendy’s with a damp crotch and frizzy hair?
I feel pretty…oh so pretty…I feel pretty and witty and NOT!
Sometimes people ask me, “How is a girl like you still single?”
From now on I will answer them with “Because I’m the girl who walks into a Wendy’s with a soggy crotch and frizzy hair.”
That’ll do it.